Murder, He Wrote

A close-to-home account of an infamous Phoenix hit

Novelist Zachary Lazar has a reporters heart. In Evenings Empire, a Phoenix-centric account of the murder of his father, Lazar sets out to tell yet another of our towns stories of corruption and killing -- this one a tale close to Lazars heart, as it involves the murder of his father, Edward Lazar.

Ed Lazar, an accountant and former business partner of land-fraud baron Ned Warren Sr., was gunned down by hit men in a Phoenix parking garage in 1975. Zachary Lazar, who was 6 years old at the time, attempts in this new book to unravel how his dad might have become tangled up in a multi-million-dollar real-estate scandal involving politicians and Mafioso. Its a compelling look into the dying embers of Old Phoenix and of the various shady dealings that marked our town for decades.

Lazar reads from and signs his recently published book at Poisoned Pen.